[Reader-list] Chomsky

[Nagraj Adve]

part of a long interview of Noam Chomsky, of current relevance.

*How does the Charter of the Forest relate to environmental and indigenous
resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline?*

A lot. The Charter of the Forest, which was half the Magna Carta, has more
or less been forgotten. The forest didn't just mean the woods. It meant
common property, the source of food, fuel. It was a common possession, so
it was cared for. The forests were cultivated in common and kept
functioning, because they were part of people's common possessions, their
source of livelihood, and even a source of dignity. That slowly collapsed
in England under the enclosure movements, the state efforts to shift to
private ownership and control. In the United States it happened
differently, but the privatization is similar. What you end up with is the
widely held belief, now standard doctrine, that's called "the tragedy of
the commons" in Garrett Hardin's phrase. According to this view, if things
are held in common and aren't privately owned, they're going to be
destroyed. History shows the exact opposite: When things were held in
common, they were preserved and maintained. But, according to the
capitalist ethic, if things aren't privately owned, they're going to be
ruined, and that's "the tragedy of the commons." So, therefore, you have to
put everything under private control and take it away from the public,
because the public is just going to destroy it.

Now, how does that relate to the environmental problem? Very significantly:
the commons are the environment. When they're a common possession-not
owned, but everybody holds them together in a community-they're preserved,
sustained and cultivated for the next generation. If they're privately
owned, they're going to be destroyed for profit; that's what private owner-
ship is, and that's exactly what's happening today.

What you say about the indigenous population is very striking. There's a
major problem that the whole species is facing. A likelihood of serious
disaster may be not far off. We are approaching a kind of tipping point,
where climate change becomes irreversible. It could be a couple of decades,
maybe less, but the predictions are constantly being shown to be too
conservative. It is a very serious danger; no sane person can doubt it. The
whole species is facing a real threat for the first time in its history of
serious disaster, and there are some people trying to do some- thing about
it and there are others trying to make it worse. Who are they? Well, the
ones who are trying to make it better are the pre-industrial societies, the
pre-technological societies, the indigenous societies, the First Nations.
All around the world, these are the communities that are trying to preserve
the rights of nature.

The rich societies, like the United States and Canada, are acting in ways
to bring about disaster as quickly as possible. That's what it means, for
example, when both political parties and the press talk enthusiastically
about "a century of energy independence." "Energy independence" doesn't
mean a damn thing, but put that aside. A century of "energy independence"
means that we make sure that every bit of Earth's fossil fuels comes out of
the ground and we burn it. In societies that have large indigenous
populations, like, for example, Ecuador, an oil producer, people are trying
to get support for keeping the oil in the ground. They want funding so as
to keep the oil where it ought to be. We, however, have to get everything
out of the ground, including tar sands, then burn it, which makes things as
bad as possible as quickly as possible. So you have this odd situation
where the educated, "advanced" civilized people are trying to cut
everyone's throats as quickly as possible and the indigenous, less
educated, poorer populations are trying to prevent the disaster. If
somebody was watching this from Mars, they'd think this species was insane.